Slimefun
Slimefun (abbreviated to "SF") is one of the oldest and most important plugins on the Minecraft Planet Earth server. First released on March 16th, 2013, by the developer MrCookieSlime, Slimefun slowly gained traction as it was updated, until on May 15th, 2015 it received an explosion of popularity (transitioning from an average of two thousand downloads, to twenty thousand and beyond). It would continue to grow rapidly afterwords and its official server expand, until early to mid 2016needed when MrCookieSlime stepped down from developing the plugin, leaving management and further improvement to the community he had created. The last version published on Bukkit on May 5th has approximately 1.2 million downloads. Minecraft Planet Earth would adopt the plugin on March 14th, 2015, where it would develop into a key feature of the server as a whole. Over time, as Slimefun advanced its power to make or unmake nations and sway politics increased, until it would become vital that a nation have a Slimefun industry should it seek to attain any actual power. Today, Slimefun is arguably one of the cornerstone plugins of the server. It has gone through several changes to adapt to the server's environment and vise versa, and a whole sub-community of players on the server has developed solely to discover new and inventive ways to use Slimefun and advance industry. To imagine a Minecraft Planet Earth without Slimefun is to imagine an entirely different server. Mechanics Slimefun can be intimidating at first glance, but upon understanding the basics of how to use it, it becomes fairly simple. At its core, Slimefun is crafting in a few buildable crafting tables. Often times, the most difficult part is simply collecting the resources to craft an item, rather than anything technical. Slimefun can be viewed through the Slimefun Guide, which acts as a recipe book for the plugin. All recipes and items in the plugin (except some added via addons) are locked to the player though, and must be learned. Doing so requires certain amounts of experience levels, some items require more while others require less. Multiblocks Multiblocks are structures which have a special function or property that is only available when built in a correct way. Minecraft itself has several Multiblocks, such as the Wither, Iron Golem, Snow Golem, and Beacon pyramid, while Slimefun has 14. All but two of them in Slimefun are categorized as Basic Machines, the other two are the Ancient Alter and Teleporter. To use a Multiblock meant for crafting, the recipe is placed out in the dispenser on the Multiblock, then a part of it (typically a crafting table, fence, or cauldron) is right clicked. The Ancient Alter is the exception, instead the items required are placed onto each dispenser surrounding the alter, with a final item being placed onto the enchanting table in its center. Additional Multiblocks can be added via other plugins added to Slimefun, namely Exotic Gardens and Tinker Tools, as well as others. Categories Slimefun is broken down into 18 distinct categories (with an additional 4 appearing occasionally on holidays), and these are: Weapons, Items, Basic Machines, Tools, Resources, Foods, Magical Items, Magical Armor, Technical Components, Miscellaneous, Armor, Talismans, Magical Gadgets, Technical Gadgets, Ender Talismans, Energy and Electricity, GPS-based Machines, and Cargo Management. More categories can be added with extra plugins. Exotic Gardens adds 4; Tinker Tools adds 1; Barrels adds 1; excreta. Two weeks before and on Valentines Day, Easter, MrCookieSlime's Birthday (October 26th), and Christmas, 4 extra categories will open with special items only attainable on those days. Items crafted on these days will continue to work and function even after the event has passed. 4 categories begin as inaccessible, these are Ender Talismans, Energy and Electricity, GPS-based Machines, and Cargo Management. Ender Talismans can only be unlocked by learning everything in the Talismans category, and the other three require Basic Machines to be entirely learned. Items Slimefun has many unique items and tools that have special properties or uses. 9 18 27 36 45 54 cooler 27 soulbound 36 None 4j/s | row2 = Advanced Solar Generator None 16j/s |row3 = Carbonado Solar Generator None 64j/s|row4 = Energized Solar Generator None 256j/s}} Machines In the categories of Energy and Electricity, GPS-based Machines, and Cargo Management you can unlock and begin to use a plethora of blocks (or heads in many cases) that can do many specialized tasks. The majority of machines require electricity to be able to function. Electricity In working with electricity, two items are required, those being the Energy Regulator and at least one Capacitor. The Regulator acts as a central core for an energy grid, while capacitors store the energy, both can transmit energy up to seven blocks away from themselves in any cardinal direction, but not diagonally. Two Energy Regulators cannot co-exist in the same grid, if two are found, the grid will shut itself down. There are 12 ways to generate energy in unmodified Slimefun, these are the: Basic, Advanced, Carbonado, and Energized Solar Generators, Coal Generator tiers I and II, Lava Generators I and II, Combustion Generator, Bio Generator, Nuclear Reactor, and Nether Star Reactor. By far the generator that outputs the most energy is the Nether Star Reactor, outputting a total of over 1 million energy over the period of 30 minutes. Despite this, Nuclear is considered the best energy generator, because although it makes half of what the Nether Star Reactor would, it is more easily maintained, and more importantly it is automatable. GPS GPS is one of the more useful, though expensive, aspects of Slimefun. There are two uses for it, resource extraction and teleportation. Of resource extraction, GPS-based Machines only extract Oil, Nether Ice, and low amounts of Uranium from chunks, thus making Teleportation the far more useful feature of the two. GPS relies on a power system of sorts, known as "Complexity". Complexity can be built up via GPS Transmitters, of which there are four tiers, Basic, Advanced, Carbonado, and Energized. Each Transmitter on their own gives a certain amount of Complexity, which can also be increased by placing the Transmitter at a higher Y coordinate. Each requires a constant amount of electricity, and the chunk that their in to be constantly loaded. Complexity is used by the Geo-Scanner, GPS Control Panel, and Teleporter. The Geo-Scanner scans the chunk it's in for Oil, Nether Ice, and Uranium Chunks, but to do so it requires a small GPS network to have already been established, it requires 600 complexity to use. The GPS Control Panel requires a minimum of one transmitter, or one way-point to be placed in order to function, and allows the operator to view all way-points and transmitters they have placed, as well as the Complexity they have built up. Upon scanning a chunk with a Geo-Scanner, an Oil Pump or GEO Miner can then be added and powered with electricity to extract said resources. Teleporters are by far the most used feature of the GPS-based Machines. They have their own dedicated Multiblock, and can send the user to up to 21 preset way-points. Time is required to teleport, and it can take anywhere from 1 minute to 1 second to teleport to a destination, based on distance from the Teleporter, Complexity, and World. Often, trans-dimensional teleports take the longest. The higher the complexity, the less time it takes to teleport to a waypoint, regardless of location or world. Cargo The final of the three machine categories, Cargo Management is the only one that does not require Electricity for any of its items to function. Instead, Cargo Management items rely on being connected to a "Cargo Network", which like an Energy Network, is centered around the Cargo Manager. Cargo Management has several nodes. The Cargo Manager, Connector, Input, Output, Advanced Output, and Trash Can. Of them, the Cargo Manager and Connector Nodes act as connectors for the rest of the machines, and like Capacitors for Energy Networks, can connect nodes in each of the cardinal directions, but not diagonally. Connector Nodes can only detect nodes up to 6 blocks from itself. Having two Cargo Managers in one system will force a shut down. Input Nodes and Output Nodes can be affixed to chests or blocks with an inventory, and this includes Slimefun machines with inventories. Input Nodes will withdraw items from and send them into the Cargo system, while Output Nodes will deposit them. Up to 9 items can be whitelisted or blacklisted in Input Nodes and Advanced Output Nodes (regular Output Nodes cannot do this), and they can be set to 1 of 16 channels, corresponding with each of the 16 colors of wool. Input Nodes in one channel will only send items to an Output Node in the same channel. To make setting up a Cargo system easier, the Cargo Manager and Connector Nodes will put particles in each block they can connect to, and this can be disabled by right clicking the Manger. Right clicking a Connector Node will also display if its connected or not.